How Much Flooring Do I Need? Measuring Rooms and Planning for Waste
· 7 min read · By Floors To You OKC
Before you can compare flooring prices, you need to know how much flooring you are actually buying. Order too little and the job stops halfway while you wait for more, which may not match what is already down. Order too much and you have paid for boxes that sit in the garage. Here is how square footage really gets worked out, how much extra to plan for, and why the number on a professional quote is usually a little higher than the number from your tape measure.
Step 1: measure each room
For a rectangular room, measure the length and the width at the widest points, wall to wall, and multiply them. A room 12 feet by 14 feet is 168 square feet. Round each measurement up to the next half foot rather than down, because walls are rarely perfectly straight.
Most rooms are not perfect rectangles. Break an L-shaped room or an open plan into rectangles, measure each one, and add them together. Measure closets, pantries and alcoves separately and include them, because the floor almost always runs into them.
- ✓Measure to the wall, not to the baseboard
- ✓Include closets and the floor under doors and openings
- ✓Leave out areas under permanently fixed cabinets and islands
- ✓Sketch the rooms on paper with the measurements, so nothing gets counted twice
Step 2: add extra for cuts and waste
No floor goes down with zero waste. Planks have to be cut at every wall and around every doorway, some pieces are too short to use, and a few may have flaws. So you always order more than the bare square footage. How much more depends on the material and the layout.
- ✓Straight-lay luxury vinyl plank, laminate or wood in simple rooms: about 5 to 10 percent extra
- ✓Diagonal layouts, herringbone, and rooms with lots of angles or closets: about 10 to 15 percent, sometimes more
- ✓Tile: usually at the higher end, since tiles break and large formats leave bigger offcuts
Step 3: round up to whole boxes
Hard flooring is sold by the carton, and each carton covers a set number of square feet printed on the box. Divide your total, including waste, by the coverage per box and round up. Using the 168 square foot room from above with 10 percent extra, you need about 185 square feet. If the plank you picked comes in cartons of 20 square feet, that is 9.25 boxes, so you order 10.
It is worth keeping one of those spare boxes. Flooring is made in batches that vary slightly in color, and a box from your original lot is what makes a future repair blend in. Our guide to caring for luxury vinyl plank explains how a single damaged plank can be replaced.
Why carpet is figured differently
Carpet does not come in boxes. It comes off a roll, most often 12 feet wide, and it is usually priced by the square yard, which is 9 square feet. That means the amount of carpet a room needs depends on how the roll fits the room, not just the room's area.
A room that is 12 feet wide fits a 12-foot roll perfectly. A room that is 13 feet wide needs the full roll width plus a strip seamed onto the side, and that strip has to be cut from more carpet. The installer also has to plan where seams fall, keep them out of doorways and traffic paths where possible, and keep the pile running the same direction in every piece, or the seams show. That is why carpet is laid out room by room on a diagram, and why two rooms with the same square footage can need different amounts of carpet. Our guide to what carpet installation costs in OKC covers how that turns into a price.
Stairs are counted by the step
Stairs are not measured like a floor. Each tread and riser is its own piece, wrapped or cut to fit, and the labor is far more than the square footage suggests. Stairs are usually measured and quoted by the step, with landings measured separately. Our guide to stair flooring compares carpet, LVP and wood on stairs.
What a tape measure will not tell you
Square footage gets you the material. It does not tell you everything the job needs, and these are the things that change a quote.
- ✓Transitions where the new floor meets tile, carpet or a different height of floor
- ✓Linear feet of baseboard or quarter round that has to be removed and replaced
- ✓Whether the old floor has to come out, and what is under it
- ✓Whether the subfloor or slab is flat enough, or needs leveling first
- ✓Doors that may need trimming if the new floor sits higher than the old one
Let us do the measuring
Measuring your own rooms is a great way to get a ballpark and set a budget. For the order itself, it is better done by the people who will install the floor, because they measure for the layout they will actually use, check the subfloor, and count the trim and transitions at the same time. Our guide to subfloor prep explains why that last part matters.
Every in-home estimate we do includes a full measurement, and the quote you get is itemized, so you can see the material quantity with waste, the prep, the installation and the trim as separate lines. On in-stock material, installation can often happen the next day. Book a free in-home estimate and we will bring samples and the tape measure.
